


Alternatives

by WishStone



Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: Alternative Universe - Sixth Singularity, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms References, Father-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 04:43:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20576660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WishStone/pseuds/WishStone
Summary: What WishStone should do at 22:30 on a Sunday: Sleep.What WishStone did instead: Write a short fic on her mobile.I love the huge amounts of fanart showing the Lion King as the father Mordred always wanted (including the weird one with a family picture of Morgan, Arturia, and child Mordred...)I just like to think that, just that once, my son Mordi got to lead a good life with her dad. Let me and the two of them have this one.





	Alternatives

**Author's Note:**

> If it confuses you that the two of them use female pronouns, but address one another as male, well, you need to know the fate/ series a bit better to understand how touchy these two are about being addressed as female by others.  
Yes, both the King and her son are women.  
Just fate/ things...

The nightmare repeated itself. 

Mordred watched as her sword skewered her Father's side and she in return coughed a squall of blood. 

Fury beyond reason clouded her vision red... Or maybe that was the blood from the gash on her forehead? She felt dizzy. 

With primal hurt and anguish, the traitor-knight howled at the fatally wounded King. "THIS IS YOUR OWN DOING, FATHER! YOU SHOULD HAVE ACCEPTED ME! YOU SHOULD HAVE TAKEN CARE OF ME!! YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN HOW I TRIED!! YOU SHOU-"

With a flash of familiarly bright light, the King's Holy Lance Rhongomyniad pierced the knight's chest wide open in retaliation, and a familiar but different, much too young face slid closer, whispering in her dying breath: "Not even in this were you worthy, bastard son of mine..."

* * *

The Red Knight started awake, a fumbling hand knocking over the sheathed sword by her bedside, roaring out with the anguish of the fading night terror. "I killed my father! I... I murdered...!" Scrambling to dive after her sword, the young woman found herself tangled in her sheets, struggling to break free.

The door to her bedroom banged open, armed guards alerted by the shouting. Confusion on their faces, they took in the distressed Knight and the sheathed sword, before they lowered their weapons, not entering.

Stumbling out of bed, her trembling knees hitting the rough, cold flagstones, Mordred started to sob. That dream felt so _real_, even though she knew it had never been true. _Could not_ be true. The door to her father's room was in the narrow behind her bed, same as it had been since Camelot was built. She had always slept here; had always guarded the night time rest of her father, had always proudly protected the Lion King. 

And she, the proud King, in turn had worked her son mercilessly but steadily into one of the most feared knights of the realm. Harder on her than on any other Knight, she shaped her son into the future of her kingdom. Few would be foolish enough to doubt the loyalty and the thirst for loving acceptance that kept Mordred by the King's side without fear or falter.

Except... Every time this nightmare showed itself it just felt so... so real...

If she closed her eyes for too long, she could still see it haunting behind her eyelids. A hill, soaked in the blood of hundreds of dead or dying men; cries of fury and betrayal in the air. And her, insane with the sorrow of a son's broken heart, seeking out her father, only seeking to destroy all she had built. Seeking to destroy what each of them had built. 

Seeking to...

"I'm going insane..." the son of the Lion King whispered, rubbing her face in shaky hands.

The guards took an uneasy step into the dark room, pausing with anxious tension as they heard a loud clanking noise from the far side of the bed. 

The door to the Red Knight's father's bedchamber creaked open and the voluptuous form of her King, only dressed in a night-shift and dust cloak, entered. At once the guards scrambled to leave, dismissed with just a cool look by their King. Without waiting for her order to be fulfilled, she turned and her feet patted to the side of her only son and heir.

Mordred saw Calibrun glint in her father's hand before it was discarded unto her bed. Stepping to stand before her heir-apparent, Lion King Arturia asked in a low voice: "That same dream?"

Mordred could barely nod, before reaching with shaking hands to grasp the bottom seam of her father's shift in both hands.

"My son..." Arturia said softly, a gentle hand patting tussled blonde hair. "Remember what I said. Those visions are not your own memory-"

Mordred shook her head, feeling the palm of the Lion King rub her hair into even more disarray. "Buh-But!" she pressed out in distress. "It is _a _memory! A memory linked to me! A _memory_, Father! Not simply a dream! A recollection of what happened!" Despair was thick in the voice of King Arturia's one child. 

"My dear son..." There was the faintest of sighs. "My dear, dear child." The hand caressing her protégé's tussled blonde locks paused to give her son's head a push, making Mordred look up at brightly, divinely glowing green eyes. "Other Worlds had other pasts. Other paths were tread there. What you see in these nighttime visions is but one of many different outcomes. In some worlds you were never born. In some you died crusading for your father. In some you killed your mother. In some you never told your father who you are. In some Merlin found and groomed you himself." She paused, green glowing orbs seeming to draw her son's own in. "I have seen them all; have paid witness to thousands upon thousands of lives you and I could have led."

The Lion King's hand stilled and she hunched beside her son, taking her slender form into her arms. "I count myself blessed to be here, with you, as we both are." 

Mordred reacted instinctively, her hands flying around her father, grasping hands fisting into the thin night clothing on her King's back. "Father..." she sobbed, pressing her face deep into her King's expansive chest. "Father!"

Humming, her face expressionless as typical, Arturia pressed her child closer into her vast bosom as if she young adult were a child. She held this most loyal of her knights, until the shaking stopped, then rose, freeing herself from the embrace. "Loyal Blade Mordred," she said formally, watching her son take knee. A rare smile graced the King's lips and she stooped to take her child's face in her hand, cradling a tear-wet cheek in her callused palm. "My heir," she hummed with pride, "you are not the traitor of your own nightmares. You are my kingdom's highest glory."

"I love you, Father," the Knight whispered with longing admiration in her shivering voice.

The Lion King's smile deepened for a moment, before her face turned aloof and neutral once more. "I shall retire to my chamber once more. Watch over me, Sir Mordred."

"None will pass this blade, my liege," she replied to her father, as she had every night since she took on this post from Sir Kay several years ago.

Mordred waited for the door to her father's chamber to shut, before climbing back into her own bed. She felt her father's warmth linger, the hug still present as if the white-trimmed blue cloak of her King had been thrown over her.

It was just a spectre. Just a phantasmal haunt of a different world. Just the anxious horror of a past that showed her the lie of another woman's life. "What kind of idiot was that other me," she grunted while pulling up her blanket, "to throw away the love of my King?" 


End file.
